U.S. Filmmaker Repeatedly Detained At Border

April 10, 2012

Salon

By Glenn Greenwald

“If you make controversial films, the government now detainees you any time you travel.  Freedom of speech?” –KTRN

One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal framework whatsoever, the Department of Homeland Security routinely singles out individuals who are suspected of no crimes, detains them and questions them at the airport, often for hours, when they return to the U.S. after an international trip, and then copies and even seizes their electronic devices (laptops, cameras, cellphones) and other papers (notebooks, journals, credit card receipts), forever storing their contents in government files. No search warrant is needed for any of this. No oversight exists. And there are no apparent constraints on what the U.S. Government can do with regard to whom it decides to target or why.

Click here for the report.

Why Does The Department Of Homeland Security Need 450 Million Hollow Point Bullets?

March 29, 2012

Activist Post

By Michael Snyder

“Homeland Security should be renamed Homeland Tyranny.” –KTRN

Somebody out there has decided that the Department of Homeland Security needs a whole lot of ammunition. Recently it was announced that ATK was awarded a contract to provide up to 450 million hollow point bullets to the Department of Homeland Security over the next five years.

Is it just me, or does that sound incredibly excessive? What in the world is the DHS going to do with 450 million rounds? What possible event would ever require that much ammunition?

If the United States was ever invaded, it would be the job of the U.S. military to defend the country, so that can’t be it. So what are all of those bullets for? Who does the Department of Homeland Security plan to be shooting at? According to the U.S. Census, there are only about 311 million people living in the entire country. So why does the Department of Homeland Security need 450 million rounds of ammunition? Either this is an incredible waste or there is something that the Department of Homeland Security is not telling us.

I could understand if the U.S. military was ordering ammunition in this quantity. When you fight wars you can go through ammunition very rapidly.

But the Department of Homeland Security is only supposed to be shooting at people very rarely. It simply does not make sense that they would need so much ammunition.

The following is an excerpt from the official press release about this deal between ATK and the Department of Homeland Security….

Click here for the full report.

College Student Detained, Interrogated, Harassed At U.S. Border For Being In Islamic Studies

March 28, 2012

Activist Post

By Madison Ruppert

“Studying Islamic culture now makes you a terrorist.” –KTRN

Pascal Abidor, a dual French-American citizen, regularly crosses the Canadian-American border when traveling to visit his parents in Brooklyn, New York, from his school, McGill University.

While you read the troubling experiences of Abidor, keep in mind that while this may be disturbing, our government actually says that they can assassinate any American without any formal charge or trial, and they never have to explain or justify the supposed legal basis for this in court. When they are challenged, they simply say that the program is so secret that they cannot even confirm or deny its existence.

Abidor’s case is indeed objectionable and should not be accepted by any means, however we must remember that this is just a microcosmic example of how truly sick and demented our government has become.

On May 1, 2010, around 11 AM, the Amtrak train regularly taken by Abidor made a routine stop at the United States border.

A team of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, who are part of the behemoth that is the Department of Homeland Security, boarded the train and began to sweep through each car.

The CBP officers proceeded to question passengers and since Abidor had made the journey many times in the past, he was not at all concerned with an officer approached him.

According to The McGill Daily, Abidor was approached by an Officer Tulip who asked him, “Where do you live, and why?”

He responded that he lived in Canada, because he was pursuing a PhD in Islamic Studies at McGill.

Officer Tulip then asked him where he had traveled to in 2009, to which he responded, Jordan and Lebanon.

Abidor then presented his French passport which bore the stamps of the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” and Lebanon.

Click here for the full report.

CrimePush: Yet Another Citizen Spy Application For Smartphones

March 7, 2012

End The Lie

By Madison Ruppert

“It doesn’t make much sense why anyone thinks these spy programs are a good idea. Let’s say there is someone out there who is a jelous boyfriend who wants revenge. It would be pretty easy to use one of the programs in order to get someone in trouble on purpose as a sick joke.  This is no joke.” –KTRN

Recently I reported on the concerted effort to bring citizen spying into the digital age with applications on smartphones which can be used to report “suspicious activity” to local homeland security fusion centers.

This has expanded even more thanks to the hard work of individuals like 25-year-old Eman Pahlevani, a student at the University of New Hampshire School of Law.

Pahlevani launched an application last month called CrimePush after several months of development with his brother and a friend.

The application allows users to send in reports in the form of text, pictures or video directly to local law enforcement after police dispatch centers set up their accounts with CrimePush.

After the dispatchers have registered, users of Android-based devices and Apple iPhones within the given area are able to download the application dedicated to that location and start sending in tips, no matter how erroneous.

Interestingly, Pahlevani claims that at least one county in every single state in the United States had expressed interest in using the application in just the first three weeks after launching it.

He said that he has been getting a great deal of support from his professors, saying, “They’ve all given me a lot of feedback of: ‘It’s going to be a game changer for people who want to report crime and get information to police.’”

While this might be true, it’s also going to be a game changer for police officers who are inundated by false reports, misleading information, maliciously submitted reports and so on.

In a question and answer session with the Concord Monitor out of Concord, New Hampshire, Pahlevani revealed that he decided to turn his idea into a mobile application to appeal to young people, or as he put it, “this generation growing up with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We thought this would be a good way to open up lines of communication between the younger generation and police authorities.”

It’s also a great way to condition people into reporting every little thing to police, especially when the federal government classifies just about everything as an indicator of possible terrorism.

Click here for the full report.

YouTube Restricts Video Of Engineer Proving How Useless TSA Scanners Are

March 7, 2012

Activist Post

By Steve Watson

“This is really disturbing. Watch how easy this guy gets through the naked body scanner with a metal object in his pocket. He does it not just once, but twice. Here is just one more example that the TSA is not here to protect us.” –KTRN

Google/YouTube has placed restrictions on yet another video that exposes the fraudulent claims of the TSA and highlights how the federal agency’s security theatre is part of a wider social manipulation agenda.

Engineer Jon Corbett of the popular blog TSA Out of Our Pants! posted a video yesterday that demonstrates how the TSA’s radiation firing body scanners can easily be bypassed.

The video shows Corbett carrying a metal case through the scanner, away from his body in his side pocket. Corbett explains that because metallic objects appear as black on the image the scanners produce, the machines do not pick up such objects if they are obscured by the background, which is also black.

Corbett has been rallying against the TSA for some time and has had several run ins with agents at airports. Corbett was also the first person in the country to sue the TSA for invasion of privacy. His case is still ongoing and is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The scanners are now effectively worthless, as anyone can beat them with virtually no effort.” Corbett writes on his blog. “The TSA has been provided this video in advance of it being made public to give them an opportunity to turn off the scanners and revert to the metal detectors. I personally believe they now have no choice but to turn them off.” he adds.

Within hours of the video being uploaded, blogs and news sites, including Yahoo News and the Mail Online had begun to pick up an the video, saying it was sure to go viral.

Now, despite the fact that the video contains no nudity, violence, abuse or other explicit content, YouTube has placed it behind an age restriction wall, meaning anyone who wants to view it on YouTube has to login or sign up for an account and verify their age.

“This video is not intended to teach anyone how to commit criminal acts, nor is intended to help “the terrorists” — if I could figure this out, I’m sure they’ve long figured it out, and by exposing it to the public, we now have an opportunity to correct it.” Corbett writes on his blog.

Click here for the full report.

Troops Used For Crowd Control At Texas Kite Festival

March 5th, 2012

Info Wars

By: Paul Joseph Watson

Uniformed troops from the Texas State Guard were used for the purposes of crowd control during the Zilker Kite Festival in Austin this past weekend, with video showing the troops ordering parents and children to board school buses at the end of the event.

Disturbing footage of the troops controlling the movement of attendees was filmed by Infowars reporters, in addition to a police helicopter circling above. However, the website of the Zilker Kite Festival attempted to downplay the Guard’s involvement as if it was completely normal.

Under the headline What are Soldiers doing at the Kite Festival!?, the website states that the troops were there to “help to manage the crowds during bus loading and unloading, at parking lots, and around the event.”

According to the Texas State Guard’s website, “The Texas State Guard (TXSG) mission as a branch of the Texas Military Forces is to provide mission-ready military forces to assist State and local authorities in times of state emergencies, with homeland security and community service through Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA).”

No information concerning the TXSG being present at the Kite Festival appears on the website.

The use of the military to oversee domestic roles normally ascribed to police officers is a sign of America’s deepening decline into a state of de facto martial law.

In 2008 it was announced that U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq would be carrying out homeland patrols in America for the purposes of helping with “civil unrest and crowd control”. In recent years, budget cuts have also contributed to the increasing use of military assets to conduct routine law enforcement actions.

Military police were used to detain people at the Kentucky Derby horse race in 2009. In April of the same year, 400 Massachusetts National Guardsmen from the 126th Combat Support Battalion were deployed at the Boston Marathon to “maintain order”.

We have documented innumerable examples of Posse Comitatus being violated with uniformed troops increasingly being used to conduct routine traffic stops and provide security at public events across the nation.

The process of loading children onto buses for the purposes of forced relocation is also a scenario that has cropped up time and time again during exercises focused around responding to terror attacks and national emergencies.

During the Operation Mountain Guardian terrorism exercise undertaken in Denver last year, Colorado authorities issued a news advisory that detailed how children would be “processed” in the event of a terror attack by being taken to Denver’s Mile High Stadium.

Infowars reporters Aaron Dykes and Darrin McBreen, who were covering the drill, confirmed that buses marked “special” were used for that purpose.

As part of the same drill, a SWAT team raided a Denver school, terrorizing children as young as first grade with a traumatic and frighteningly realistic school shooter scenario.

Federal exercises have specifically targeted children on a number of occasions, most infamously in Muskegon, Michigan. In 2004, a Michigan county concocted a scenario in which public school children were threatened by a fictitious radical group that believed everyone should be home-schooled, WorldNetDaily reported. The exercise was funded by homeland security grants to area school districts and Muskegon county.

A 2003 Washington Post article revealed how school administrators in the Washington area had told parents they would be “prevented, or strongly discouraged, from picking up their children” in the event of a terrorist attack.

Under the plan, schools would be locked down and parents would not be able to retrieve their children.

For The Full Story Go To Info Wars

Document Proves DHS Is Monitoring Social Media For Government Criticism

February 23, 2012

Info Wars

By Paul Joesph Watson

“You might want to think twice before you post an anti-government comment on your Facebook page. Apparently, the government doesn’t have anything better to do than read social media. What are they afraid of? The answer is you and me. Hooray for freedom.” –KTRN

A Homeland Security training manual belies claims made by DHS representatives during a Congressional hearing last week that the federal agency is only monitoring social media outlets for “situational awareness,” and proves the fact that Bis Sis is also tracking online criticism of government, including discussion of airport body scanners.

“Analysts for a Department of Homeland Security program that monitors social networks like Twitter and Facebook have been instructed to produce reports on policy debates related to the department, a newly disclosed manual shows,” reports the New York Times.

The manual, entitled Department of Homeland Security National Operations Center Media Monitoring Capability Desktop Reference Binder, was obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center via a FOIA request.

The controversy over DHS spying on social media erupted last month following the release of 300 documents which detailed how DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security.”

During a subsequent Congressional hearing on the matter, DHS representatives Mary Callahan and Richard Chávez denied the fact that tracking criticism of government agencies formed any part of the program, and that the effort was merely aimed at developing “situational awareness” of potential threats, mostly related to extreme weather events.

However, the 2011 manual makes it abundantly clear that the program was a backdoor effort to keep tabs on what the American people were saying about not just the DHS, but a whole host of federal agencies, including the CIA, the ATF, the TSA, FEMA, as well as organizations outside of the U.S. government such as the United Nations and the Red Cross.

Click here for the full report.

McCain To Introduce Cybersecurity Legislation Giving Even More Domestic Control To NSA, Military

February 23, 2012

End The Lie

By Madison Ruppert

“John McCain in an evil man. Let’s not forget he was one of the major players at getting the NDAA signed. Please vote this man out of office.” –KTRN

During the Senate’s major hearing on cybersecurity last week, Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, announced that the Republicans in the Senate would introduce a bill to compete with S. 2105, also known as the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.

McCain seeks to give the NSA and the military previously unimaginable powers over civilian networks, even further expanding the ludicrous power over American citizens given to the military under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA).

This is similar to the conclusions drawn by a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which unsurprisingly had a long list of corporate “advisers” who would directly benefit from such a centralization.

Although, even the legislation as it is currently being considered follows the study’s recommendations by putting the power in the hands of DHS. McCain would apparently rather see that power in the military’s hands.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is currently being supported by the chairmen of not only the Senate’s Homeland Security committee but also the chairs of the commerce and intelligence committees as well.

The current bill is cosponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California.

McCain spoke out against rushing the debate on this legislation and instead called for widening the role of the National Security Agency (NSA) in cybersecurity matters domestically.

On the February 16 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee McCain said that the fact that similar legislation has been introduced in the past by Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, in the past does not mean that this new bill should be rushed to a vote.

“To suggest that this bill should move directly to the Senate floor because it has ‘been around’ since 2009 is outrageous,” McCain said.

“First, the bill was introduced two days ago. Secondly, where do Senate Rules state that a bill’s progress in a previous congress can supplant the necessary work on that bill in the present one?”

Click here for the full report.

False Flag Terror Attack is Imminent

February 8, 2012

Prison Planet

By Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson

“Don’t be surprised when another ‘terrorist attack’ happens soon. They are looking for any reason to go to war with Iran. The people of the world just want to live in peace – it’s the world’s leaders who can’t get it right – not the people.” –KTRN

Given the fact that the US and Israel are both yearning for a casus belli to launch an attack on Iran, added to recent history where a staged provocation was considered, and in addition to the innumerable examples of false flags overseen by the Obama administration alone, the threat of staged terror has never been greater.

Unlike the plethora of fake terror alerts that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge admitted were issued for political propaganda, this one is very serious indeed.

The American public are being bombarded with the same propaganda in two similar but separate formats, one that Iran is looking to launch a terror attack on U.S. soil, and two that domestic extremists also pose a violent threat.

However, as recent history tells us, it is the government itself which routinely stages and facilitates violent events in pursuit of its political objectives, therefore the same interests should be the number one suspects if and when violent events occur.

US intelligence officials last week upped the rhetoric against Iran during congressional testimony by claiming that Tehran is prepared to launch reprisal attacks inside the United States.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. cited the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil as a sign that, “Some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

As we documented at the time, according to retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, no information concerning the supposed plot even existed within FBI channels, strongly suggesting the story was manufactured by the Obama administration. The New York Times also reported that the dubious nature of the plot caused “a wave of puzzlement and skepticism from some foreign leaders and outside experts.”

Advocates of an attack on Iran have implied that the US could stage a provocation as a pretext for a military assault. In January 2008, Dick Cheney’s office considered staging an incident to be blamed on Iran wherein US ships patrolling the Strait of Hormuz were attacked.

Click here for the full report.

Full Body Scanners At Super Bowl 2012

Paul Joseph Watson

Infowars.com

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Fans attending the 2012 Super Bowl on Sunday will face a new level of security in addition to pat downs before they are allowed to enter the Lucas Oil Stadium – full body x-ray scanners.

According to WPRI.com News reporter Matt Touchette, despite a congressional demand for an investigation into the machines following health concerns, the scanners will be part of the security set up in Indianapolis this weekend, marking the first time that the controversial devices have been used for a public sporting event.
“I was out for a stroll with the intention of snapping some photos for our blog when my travels took me to Lucas Oil Stadium of all places,” writes Touchette. “It was there that I stumbled upon a temporary Patriots street sign put in place close to the site of Super Bowl XLVI (appropriately). I then found myself walking into the side gates of the stadium, through intense security which included full body scanners and then down the tunnel onto the field.”

Although Super Bowl authorities and Homeland Security have announced that pat downs and bag searches will be part of security procedures before the game, they have failed to properly inform the public that x-ray body scanners, linked with cancer risks by numerous prestigious health bodies, will also be in use.
Hailing “the most technologically protected Super Bowl,” Frank Straub, Indianapolis’ director of public safety, said that “X-ray machines” would be used throughout the stadium, but didn’t specify whether this referred to devices that scanned bags or people.
Senator Susan Collins, ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, yesterday introduced a bill that would require an independent study of backscatter x-ray scanners, following the TSA’s about-face on a decision to test the machines. The federal agency also backtracked on a promise to test TSA workers themselves for radiation exposure last month.
Numerous studies conducted by prestigious universities and health authorities, including Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, the University of California, and the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety, have warned that the x-ray scanners will lead to an increase in cancers.
Johns Hopkins’ biophysics expert Dr Michael Love warned that, “statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays,” after conducting a study of the naked body scanners.
The Lucas Oil Stadium will be surrounded by a security perimeter that fans will have to clear before they even get to the stadium itself.

Click here for the full report from Infowars.com.

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